Time Out London is currently offering this absolutely bloody ridiculous offer on their site: “93% off a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Diploma”. Actually worth a “whopping £599” it’s currently available for the low, low price of £39!
Pretty amazing. Especially when it turns out that the course is being run by the NLP Centre of Excellence, and NLP as we all know, is a pile of incoherent and festering ordure. Also, a closer reading of the text reveals that the course is just a few e-books.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a serious set of therapeutic technologies, with a substantial evidence base, useful for treating several classes of mental health issues. It usually takes several years to become a CBT therapist – the most common route is to complete a clinical doctorate training program, and then do additional specialist training afterwards. In the UK, CBT therapists are registered with a professional body called the BABCP, and are required to undergo regular peer-supervision, and conduct their therapy sessions within the guidelines of the association.
Anyone who thinks they can become a CBT therapist by reading a couple of manuals from some NLP charlatans is in serious need of therapy themselves. I bet the e-books aren’t even about CBT; it’s probably the same old NLP twaddle warmed over again with a new title. This is an out-and-out scam, plain and simple.
NeuroBollocks 
You are right to open up the issue of what CBT exactly means nowadays. The term has been widened and misused so much, it can mean anything from lifestyle advice to mindfulness. However, one of the worst offenders in the dumbing down process has been the NHS mental health services. They have a problem, no doubt, in that CBT is quite labour intensive and therefore expensive, yet NICE recommend it for practically every mental health problem. The chances of seeing someone with the qualifications you mention is very low, that’s if you get to see anyone at all. Not surprisingly the bollocks sector has found an opportunity to muscle in.
Excellent points, and you’re right – CBT had become a bit of a victim of its own success in the NHS and IAPT services (originally designed to treat anxiety and depression) are under pressure to accept other kinds of patients.
I bought such a course. Don’t kill me for it! I had CBT and wanted to cement the skills I learned. I haven’t read the course content yet but will follow up if I think it’s more NLP than CBT. No one can expect to become a therapist from an online course. That’s a false claim that surely they must be legally made to retract?? Still £39 is cheaper and less troublesome than trudging back and forth to a counsellor if your need is not that great…
Fair enough – hope it helps you out!
‘Pile of incoherent festering ordure’ …love it, thanks for the laugh!
:o)
Reblogged this on CRPS UK.
I am a trained accredited Counsellor (Person centred) with a BA (hons) degree in counselling. I am also a member of the BACP. I bought this course recently thinking -” well lets just see” ! Its actually quite good – 24 modules on CBT (not NLP) Not sure if the ‘Diploma’ will hold much academic weight but its certainly worth £39 for the literature alone. It includes and covers a history of CBT, Life stage theory, Ethics, Supervision, When and where to use CBT, Developmental theories, coaching and a bit of DBT too! I found it interesting and better than I expected.
Hello Karen, Just found this post as I was thinking about buying this course. I was just wondering how you found it? Thanks Donna
I just fell for this and the course content that is advertised is completely different to what i have been sent. The lady dealing with my complaint Cath Cartridge is completely ambivalent and playing the ‘not to my knowledge card’. This company is a total scam…..
This is a timely post – thanks for putting it up. Prior to finding you I’d just ‘interacted’ with the NLP Centre of Excremense and immediately had large red flags flying.The calls were supposedly taken at the training centre by young people who had no idea whatsoever of any product details, not even the basic concepts of NLP, so were unable to help me – but they have taken my number so a member of the ‘training team’ can call me back.
I may be way off beam, but it seems to be a call centre, reading from a script, and when you ask for details not on message, they fold. One actually put the phone down on me when I asked if they actually were the training centre or a call centre representing a company.
This has piqued my interest, and a company check shows NLPCE’s total assets as a shade over £27k with liabilities of £9.8k. Doesn’t seem a big NLP centre with those figures – and it isn’t. Their website is full of beaming happy people holding certificates, which subliminally suggests they are actually in the Training Centre…they might be, but going from the contact details on the NLCP website, Zoopla shows the business is being run from a semi detached house in Stockport.
I’ll be back after the phone call from ‘one of the training team’.
Thanks again for the post!
Well i must say that this is an interesting post for everyone who are like to become a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist.
Thanks and keep on sharing..
Cbt Therapist London
Wow, why so much hate! I am doing a Doctorate myself in Counselling Psychology and wanted to have a look at this course so bought the offer to compare it to what we are taught material wise. Must say I am impressed. Very good material and helpful stuff. In our 3 year PsychD course we spend a whole academic year studying CBT and to be honest the material is not so difference compared to what is on offer on this deal. The only difference between the PsychD and this diploma, I would say is that you must do a clinical placement about 200 hours of practise with supervision using the tools learnt from CBT theory. Thats all! Oh and of course the price too. We have to pay £10,000 a year for the PsychD! Plus you don’t need to be extremely intelligent to understand the CBT theories! Psychoanalysis, maybe!
If you have personal experience with CBT and life experience with people skills, personally I don’t see how it would hurt to help others. CBT is non invasive and very helpful for many people who need the help. Of course for many academics like myself who have worked hard to get a doctorate it is hard to accept that you don’t need a Dr. in front of your name to be a good therapist. In fact in my opinion the best therapist I have come across myself have had masters level or diploma level of training with life experience. Hope this helps.
It does help to have some level of understanding of psychology to understand the theory in the ebooks sent. You have to write a few essays and do a few assessment questions to pass and be awarded the diploma.
Diploma training includes practical hours. So no, you don’t need to be a doctor to treat people but you can’t read a manual on scuba diving then take learners on a dive with you claiming to have learnt the necessary skills to be safe. Same with CBT. The concept is very simple and logical: thoughts influence feelings, which in turn influence behaviour. So behaviour modification is about slowing down automatic thoughts that create automatic behaviours. There now you know about CBT, £500 please.
Was glad to read your reply. I just signed up for the course as I felt it would inform and contribute to my job (I’m an adviser, not a therapist, but anything that helps me better understand people is surely useful.) I thought it might also be a good way to see if it’s something I want to pursue in more depth later. The content looks like a varied and interesting introduction to the subject. I don’t understand all the vitriol on this post and this thread and particularly find the passive-aggressive comment that anyone looking at such a course needs therapy themselves offensive – I imagine a lot of people who signed up had similar thought processes to me.
Thanks for sharing such an information with us as it is very important in this time that everyone should be known about the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
It helps us to be aware from these things. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your work.
Your opinion is worthless as it is just that – an opinion. My opinion and experience is that NLP is not rubbish. The problem is that you are poisoning everyone else with your uninformed junk opinions, AND they are stupid enough to believe what you have to say!
don’t judge a field by the people in it. The company calling themselves the centre for excellence is the worst example of online dodgy businesses. You can do cake making and CBT and everything in between. Better than that they issue multiple certificates from every organisation they’ve set up so you can get a CBT certificate for cake making…
You know I have a mental health problem they call it Bi-Polar 1. The minute I saw this course my thoughts were how fun I love to learn. Second I was told I could become a life coach at a cost of 5 to 8 thousand. My response was you can not be taught to be a life coach it’s something you have in you. When you live with a mental illness and learn to survive and deal with it hey that’s the best training you can get…….Yes, Cognitive skills I taught and sought myself it’s part of the territory. Can I be a therapist?
Ive ordered a course from them at £100 which didn’t arrive. Ive contacted them by phone over 7 times now and non of the call staff can help me and some are just plain rude. I posted on their facebook page to say I just want the course work ive paid for or my money back and they removed my comments and blocked me from their page. Centre of excellence more like centre of conning people
Quite a few idiots here, who really need to be analysed, and put away.
My CBT online could not be simpler to understand. I am happy to have completed the course. Best of all, you are asked to check weekend meetings in Manchester.
Ben K
I have paid for the course, have also started online training to be a smart facilitator, and will go on to put this into practice by facilitating smart meetings, voluntarily, giving me experience in theory and in practice! I really hope that there is recognition , as it’s took me years to try get on my feet and get the courage to do something for myself, as battled my own demons, got out of an abusive relationship. I’ve only read my way through some of the material, and my support worker thought the material looked spot on, he has a diploma for a course he paid for elsewhere, is a psychotherapist, and a very good one!
I just bought the course. Not under the impression that I would become a CBT therapist. But I do have several books about the subject, have read up quite a bit on it and spoken to practicing health professionals about CBT, cognitive therapy and ABA oriented therapies. My reason for spending £29, which is the price now is:
to pick the raisins that I may have missed from other sources
to perhaps get more leads to other legit sources, including studies and such
because…
I work with fearful and fear aggressive dogs. For such animals, “we” only have two bastardized procedures which are used. A animal behaviorist version of systematic desensitization and an animal behaviorist version of counterconditioning – which, depending upon who is describing these procedures, can be either respondent (as intended) or operant procedures AND may be done either separately or with somehow mashed together.
I stumbled across CBT about 18 months ago looking at things like Participant and Symbolic modeling (seldom directly referenced in CBT directly, but evidently still part of many techniques for specific fear and phobia treatments), Reinforced Practice, as well as the critical importance of the therapist-client trust relationship. i’ve put what I’ve found into a book for fellow canine behavior consultants and took some of these concepts and reconfigured them, including many of the cognitive aspects to support things like Social Referencing, Attachment Theory, etc. and developed additional procedures for dogs which, as Michelle Craske states in her 2010 book on CBT, use the underlying processes of:
extinction
habituation
expectancy violation
to help develop new coping strategies for the dogs and especially their caretakers.
But …
being the curious type, i’m always looking for more insight into this as well as other techniques, which I can “steal” and use in my work with dogs. $29 is less than I’ve paid for many of the books weighing down my bookshelf and clogging up my Kindle app on my Mac, but … if I get 2-3 new ideas, it’ll be well worth it.
greeting from Switzerland
Buzz Cecil
I chose this course for personal development, yes it is not exactly what we would call classroom learning, however, I did find it useful and have helped me personally, However, I checked on the NHS website the criteria does meet lots of the NICE guidelines.